Category Archives: 2010

Old Wycombiensian Lodge, No. 6754, hosted the 63rd Annual Festival of the Federation of School Lodges in the Queen’s Hall of the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe on Saturday, September 4th 2010. Over 220 members attended the Lodge Meeting which included the Prestonian Lecture, Music in Masonry and Beyond, delivered by W.Bro. Wayne Buffet Warlow, the well known Musical Director, Composer, Conductor, Arranger, Producer and Presenter.

His lecture was the highlight of the day, many of us knew prior to the meeting that Mozart was a Freemason but Wayne Warlow informed us that Haydn and Sibelius were masons, and Irving Berlin Jerome Kern, Nat King Cole, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Glenn Miller, Sigmund Romberg, Al Jolson and Joe Loss were also freemasons.

Sir Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert and Sullivan fame, was the Grand Organist of the United Grand Lodge of England during Queen Victoria’s Jubilee Year. Some 49 members did not dine but and an identical number of Ladies joined the members for the Festive Board. While the members enjoyed the lecture the ladies made up two parties, one to visit Hughenden Manor, the home of Prime Minister Disraeli, and much later used by Bomber Command during World War II, and the other to visit the Chair Museum at High Wycombe. The town, situated in the middle of beech woods was the centre of the chair making industry during the last century.

The meeting was honoured by the presence of W.Bro. Mike Stimson, the Assistant Provincial Grand Master of Buckinghamshire, and W.Bro. Gordon Robertson, also Assistant Provincial Grand Master of Buckinghamshire, R.W. David Jenkins, the Provincial Grand Master of Somerset, who attended as a member of the Taunton School Lodge, R.W. Bro. Digby Woods, Past ProvGM of Berkshire,

V.W.Bro. Nelson Hall, Past Dep ProvGM of Buckinghamshire, V.W.Bro. Jeffrey Gillyon, Deputy ProvGM Yorkshire North and East Riding, and the President of the Federation. V.W.Bro. Dr. Nigel Bramley- Howarth., Past.Dep ProvGM of East Lancashire.

W.Bro. Bramley Howarth gave an excellent speech when presenting books for the school library to Mr. Roy Page, Headmaster of the Royal Grammar School. The Chairman of the Federation, W.Bro. Norman Rowe of the Old Hamptonian Lodge, whose sons had attended the RGS High Wycombe, enjoyed with Mr. Page some entertaining banter on the successes of the two schools and their old boys.

Founded in 1947, we are an organisation that exists to promote links between masonic lodges under the United Grand Lodge of England which derive their membership from those with a connection to a school.